3.93 Fall and Rise of China: May Fourth Movement of 1919

Last time we spoke about the New Culture Movement. China had seen humiliation after humiliation and her population was fed up. The leaking of secret dealings by foreign powers, Japan and members of the Chinese government alongside a weak stance at the Paris Peace Conference broke the camels back. The New Culture Movement that was brewing under these circumstances saw the Chinese public begin to question their traditions, confucianism and this feeling of always looking into the past, rather than the future. Things simply could not keep going on the way that they were. Numerous intellectuals began demanding major reforms to really modernize China. From vernacular writing systems, to the emancipation of women and egalitarian rights, the Chinese people were angry and they were soon going to demonstrate their anger towards their government. It would all start with youthful students who would change China forever. 

 

#93 The May Fourth Movement of 1919

 

Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.

The Xinhai Revolution of 1911 had given rise to the spirit of Chinese nationalism, demanding resistance to foreign encroachment and the elimination of domestic autocracy. While the Manchu’s were overthrown, Yuan Shikai was quick to seize the movement hostage. He silenced opposition when the Beiyang Republic was formed. Then WW1 came crashing in like a wrecking ball upon China. The Empire of Japan defeated the Germans and now occupied the Shandong Peninsula. Yuan Shikai protested this of course, but from the publics point of view not too strongly. Taking full advantage of the international situation the Japanese then imposed the twenty-one demands upon China. This was leaked to the world, enraging the Chinese populace. Though Yuan Shikai did negotiate them down into the Thirteen Demands, it was yet again another humiliation and a sign of how weak the Chinese government was. When this occurred Chinese intellectuals, students and workers were beginning to form groups and argue about what should be done. There was a sense of national survival at stake. 

In response to the Twenty-One Demands situation a boycott of Japanese goods was organized in Shanghai, and this rapidly began to spread to other cities. Yuan Shikai ordered the boycotts to seize as they spread to Yangtze port cities. Regardless the people of China still had high hopes by joining the Entente during the war, this would see China reverse her misfortunes and regain things like the Shandong Peninsula. When WW1 ended on November 11 of 1918, there was such widespread hope the national disgrace would come to an end. Chinese intellectual leaders, and leading businessmen believed the defeat of Germany had finally brought an end to the disgusting practice of secret diplomacy, foreign encroachment on their nation, militarism and the dictatorship that was pretending to be a republic. It was assumed the Shandong Peninsula lease that originally was given to the Germans, currently held by the Japanese illegally, would simply be handed back over to China. China had done a lot for the Entente war effort, she had provided hundreds of thousands of laborers at critical moments of the war, many believed, and I would say rightfully so, China earned certain demands.

Well those hopes were torn to shreds at the Paris Peace Conference. News of the conference reached China, particularly that of Japan being awarded the Shandong Peninsula. The Chinese public found out about the secret Sino-Japanese Treaty deal that Duan Qirui had signed and that of Britain's secret double promising deal to Japan to award her the Shandong Peninsula. There were also the secret Nishihara loans that had first been signed by Yuan Shikai and were then inherited by Duan Qirui. Because of all of this on April 30th, 1919 China lost her entire case at the conference, Japan was awarded the Shandong Peninsula and on top of that, there was zero mention of when the lease would return to China. All of these developments had been followed closely by Chinese intellectuals, political leaders and businessmen who were genuinely concerned about their nation's survival.

When the Chinese public found out, the first instinct was to demand those responsible for the terrible outcomes be brought to justice. Because of all the secret dealing and other exchanges between leading Beiyang officials in Beijing and Japan, they were the first culprits cited for the failure of China to regain her lost territories and there was a large suspicion there were Chinese individuals basically selling out their country to Japan. It had now become the general feeling of the people, foreign powers had hurt China, but also traitors within her government. Intellectual leaders and students who had been exposed to foreign ideologies were extremely disappointed. 

By the turn of the century, countless Chinese students had gone abroad studying in Japan, the United States and Europe. They encountered new ideas, and they reflected upon them, before proposing how such ideas could be used to solve China’s problems. In the last episode I spoke a lot about the intellectuals who brought these ideas to China. Hu Shih studied in the United States, Chen Duxiu studied in Japan, both men would become leaders of what will become known as the May Fourth Movement and other events later on. Both men would go very different paths, but at this point in time they both understood the dangers facing their nation and wanted to save it. It was within this time period the New Culture Movement sprang up. The leaders of the movement believed China’s traditional confucian based culture was holding her back from actually modernizing into a modern state. Many of them advocated for western ideas to modernize China. Chen Duxiu returned from Japan in 1915 where he had established the New Youth magazine, basically creating the vehicle for intellectuals to bring new ideas to the Chinese public. He was soon joined by Li Dazhao who also returned from Japan in 1916. 

When these intellectuals returned to China, they found her in a highly repressive state. Under Yuan Shikai, there were severe laws governing the press and these laws would survive him until the early 1920s. Yuan Shikai’s dictatorship charade of a republic became even worse when he proclaimed himself Emperor. 83 days of that disaster simply proved to the people of China, the same old tyrants that they had apparently overthrown in 1911 were still large and in charge. Laws restricted speech, association and the press, forcing publishers like the New Youth to constantly reiterate they were not creating political criticisms, just simply talking to the youth of the nation. Both Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu knew the most egregious problems facing China was her inability to toss the yoke of 2000 years of Confucianism. Both men believed it was necessary to destroy some of the old traditions to awaken their countrymen, particularly the Chinese youth so they could build a new modern state.

Chen Duxiu was perhaps more inclined to want to destroy the confucian ideological bases that held up the monarchy. In 1917 his New Youth began to carry out a program calling for dramatic reforms. At first the New Youth evaluated the pro’s and con’s of vernacular writing over classical; of western science vs chinese traditional beliefs; the virtues of confucianism and so forth. The New Culture leaders began calling for a rejection of the old traditional values and adoptions of western ideals, something they colloquially called “Sai xiansheng /Mr. Science” and “De Xiansheng / Mr. Democracy” who would replace “Mr. Confucius”. Doing such things they argued would strengthen the new Chinese state. Lu Xun wrote famous essays like the Diary of a Madman and the True Story of Ah Q criticizing classical Chinese writing and confucianism. Lu Xun would soon be regarded as one of modern China’s first great writers. The effectiveness of his stories drew from a sort of anger towards Confucianism. For example with the Diary of a Madman, the narrator slowly goes insane, convinced the Chinese people around him are all cannibals. Here is a sort of translated exurb ‘It has only just dawned on me, that all these years I have been living in a place where for four thousand years human flesh has been eaten. They eat human beings, so they may eat me. I look up the history of cannibalism in a book of Chinese history, but all he finds in the book are the two phrases Confucian virtue and morality and eat people. Finally convinced that I may have eaten several pieces of my sister’s flesh unwittingly….Perhaps there are still children who haven’t eaten men? Save the Children”. Within Chinese history, cannibalism has been a powerful image of when a society has lost all of its values and morality and for Lu Xun he was basically assaulting the entire basis of the Beiyang government and their society using this metaphor. Others like Li Dazhao by 1918 began expressing support of the October Revolution in Russia and in september of 1918, a young Mao Zedong became his assistant at the Peking University Library where they organized the Marxist Research Society. 

The Twenty-One Demands had ushered anti-japanese campaigns and the New Cultural movement. Western ideas of science, democracy, criticisms of traditional chinese customs, literature, history, philosophy, religion, social and political issues were all argued over. Political and social ideas like liberalism, pragmatism, utilitarianism, anarchism, socialism, communism all the “isms” were being measured against China’s traditional culture like one of them held the answer to solve her problems. The youthful students were caught up in all of this, and they decided to hold mass demonstrations on May 7th of 1919, the fourth anniversary of Japan’s ultimatum for the Twenty-One Demands. Events however forced these students to initiate their plans 3 days earlier on the morning of May 4th. Student leaders met at Peking college of Law and Political Science. They came from 13 colleges and universities, including the University of Peking, the heart of them all. During their meetings they came up with 5 resolutions to press upon their government:

Number 1) To oppose the granting of Shandong to the Japanese under former German concessions.

Number 2) To draw and increase awareness of China's precarious position to the masses in China.

Number 3) To recommend a large-scale gathering in Beijing.

Number 4) To promote the creation of a Beijing student union.

And Number 5) To hold a demonstration that afternoon in protest to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

Of the five resolutions, two had special importance: to awaken the Chinese people to the facts of foreign oppression and domestic treachery, and to create a permanent organization of Peking students. At 1:30pm on the 4th, over 3000 students gathered at Tiananmen square. They represented 13 colleges and universities in Beijing. The Beiyang Government tried to prevent their mass meeting by dispatching the Ministry of Education to Peking University at 11am, but he was unsuccessful at stopping the students. By 2pm, the students began to march while distributing leaflets along their way. They carried large placards with slogans written in French, English and Chinese. Slogans read “struggle for the sovereignty externally, get rid of the national traitors at home” “do away with the twenty-one demands” “don’t sign the treaty of versailles”. They also demanded the Japanese collaborationists Cao Rulin, Lu Zongyu and Zhang Zongxiang be brought to justice. They made their way to Beijing foreign Legation quarter, but they were blocked at the gates and refused entry. They waited over 2 hours, demanding entry into the quarter until they were told it was never going to happen. The students then headed north towards the residence of Cao Rulin, the Minister of Finance at the time. They considered him the worst of the treacherous bunch. They rushed into his residence hunting him down and the police intervened. Students were beaten up and 32 were arrested. After the arrests, martial law was enacted around the area surrounding the Legation Quarter. 

Immediately after everything had gone down, the students began to organize the intellectual leaders to support their cause. They tried to win over the public through more demonstrations, mass meetings,  public lectures and so forth. The established contacts amongst the masses of less educated, illiterate peoples to try and secure support from the business sector to boycott Japanese products. Their ideals began to spread throughout all of China. Chow Tse-tung a harvard graduate had this to say about the feeling of the time. country. "The Movement's aims, soon won sympathy from the new merchants, industrialists, and urban workers, and the Peking Government was forced to compromise in its foreign and domestic policies. This victory of the new coalition facilitated the expansion of the cultural and intellectual reforms it advocated”.

Within two months of the incident, a series of student demonstrations and strikes managed to form an alliance between students, businessmen, industrialists and workers. Though on the surface it looked like a purely student movement, the May Fourth Movement was the logical result of the efforts of the intellectual leaders of the New Culture Movement. It was the professors, teachers and writers who had inspired the youthful students to form the mass movement. They were supported wholeheartedly by the intellectual leaders and this formed a de facto alliance between reformists and revolutionaries. The New Culture Movement swelled from this alliance, drawing in people who would have been indifferent to it. Everyone began questioning the old traditional culture, it was like an ideological virus. 

Political organizations, such as the Communist Party of China developed during this time. Among the masses caught up in the movement was a young Mao Zedong who became an active member of the New People’s Study Society. At the time he was the editor of the Student Union Publication of Hunan province which promoted students cause and was critical of the Beiyang government. The weekly publication was quickly suppressed by the military governor of Hunan. This only further intensified Mao Zedong’s anti government activities and drove him further and further towards Marxism. Later in 1939, as the CCP senior leader Mao Zedong would claim the May Fourth Movement was a stage leading toward the fulfillment of the Chinese Communist Revolution “The May Fourth Movement twenty years ago marked a new stage in China's bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism. The cultural reform movement which grew out of the May Fourth Movement was only one of the manifestations of this revolution. With the growth and development of new social forces in that period, a powerful camp made its appearance in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, a camp consisting of the working class, the student masses and the new national bourgeoisie. Around the time of the May Fourth Movement, hundreds of thousands of students courageously took their place in the van. In these respects the May Fourth Movement went a step beyond the Revolution of 1911”.Other prominent CCP figures would be born from the movement. In fall of 1919 at Wuchang, Lin Biao became an organizer for the Social Welfare Society and the Social Benefit Book Store. In September of 1919 a young Zhou Enlai returned from studying in France and joined the Awakening Society in Tientsin.

Yet while I just emphasized the communist leaders that emerged, the May Fourth Movement was dominated primarily by western ideas. Liberalism, anarchism, utopian socialism and marxism gradually saw a wedge drive between them forming two competing factions. Mr. Chow Tse-Tung said of this ''The Movement, gradually became involved in politics, and the united front of new intellectuals collapsed. The liberals (reformists) lost their zeal or turned away from political activity, whereas the left wing (the revolutionary intellectuals) of the Movement took the expedient political step of allying itself with the nationalists to overthrow the warlord Peking regime . " Prior to the May Fourth Movement, marxism was not really picking up much speed amongst the intellectuals in China. Li Dazhao just a few months prior to the May fourth movement was the only real Bolshevik in China. Excluding his students, Li Dazhao’s views of the Bolshevik revolution that had recently occurred in Russia was not really taken seriously as a tool to reconstruct China, let alone the world. In January of 1919, Li Dazhao called upon the people of Asia “to rise against the European imperialist robbers, only by overthrowing the capitalist classes of the whole world”. With this he argued the oppressed peoples would do away with the injustice of the international order that allowed the great powers to continue humiliating China. In February of 1919, while everyone was anticipating the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference, Li Dazhao called it “the european division of the spoils conference”.

Many intellectuals in China still pinned their hopes on Versailles, when the outcome came many were driven to radicalism. Many were driven to socialism and there are many reasons why it was so attractive. Many of the intellectuals saw within socialism many of the same ideals of western democracy. However many of them rejected the existing political and social order of the west…and why wouldn't they, the west was exploiting their nation and others. In many ways they viewed socialism as a sort of marriage between their nationalistic ideals and anti-imperialism. China had suffered greatly due to imperialism from the west and Japan. When they heard about the Bolshevik revolution against their tyrannical Tsarist government it was seen very much as a anti-imperialist movement. In so many ways, the May Fourth Movement of 1919 was akin to a Chinese Renaissance, certainly with its focus upon science and democracy. 

Following the May Fourth Movement came the creation of the CCP in 1921, but also the revitalization of the Kuomintang. Now this is also right smack dab in the middle of the Warlord Era. I am choosing to keep these things separated because the podcasts would just go all over the place, but beginning roughly in 1919 major Warlords would commence in this episode Game of Thrones scenario. Wars, propaganda, diplomacy, alliances, its a crazy history with numerous big figures and it will rage all the way until the Japanese invasion of 1931. We will be stuck in this period for…well I have no idea haha. On my personal channel I tried to tackle the warlord Era, it ended up being 7 episodes long, with one long format to encompass it around an hour and 47 minutes long. Even with that, I barely scratched the Warlord Era, I only tackled the most well known battles and figures, I missed countless ones, thus I am hoping in this podcast series to do a much more full job. I will admit its difficult to get good sources as a non Mandarin speaker, but during my experience researching for my youtube channel I luckily came across a lot. Not to toot my own horn, but other than literally CCTV run channels, I think I am the only person on Youtube who even tried to cover the warlord period effectively. I will give credit to a fellow Quebecois Jesse Alexander from the Great War Channel, they did do a large summarization of the Warlord Era. Anyways getting off track, I now want to finish this episode up just explaining the greater influence the May Fourth Movement would have.

The emergence of the CCP on the political stage as a form of anti-imperialism was foreshadowed by Li Dazhao. Li Dazhao had been one of the main advocates emphasizing anti-imperialism and political action. His students were pressed to go out and influence the common people of China, from the urban cities to the rural villages. After the May Fourth Movement, Li Dazhao became a major leader and many flocked to him. Li Dazhao’s library at the Peking University where Mao Zedong was working as an assistant became the regular meeting place for student leaders. There they came under his influence. The Marxist Research Society organized by Li Dazhao sent its members across China to spread their ideals. I am no fan at all of communism, but like it or not, this is a hell of a grassroots movement that obviously would become successful in the end. Its important to learn how such mechanism came to be, how they operated and so forth.

Li Dazhao did not have the firmest understanding of Marxism when he began championing it to China, but he ignited the flame that would turn China ultimately in the Peoples Republic of China. He offered Marxism as a sort of revolutionary ideology that would save China. He did this in a very anti-imperialistic environment, thus it was highly palatable. Chen Duxiu was also drawn to Marxism, a lot so because of the Shandong Problem. He was disgusted with what he saw as treachery on the part of the imperialistic nations and leaders within the Beiyang government. Now Chen Duxiu took up a stance of not getting political involved, that was until the May Fourth Movement. After this he quite literally jumped into the heck of it. 

Chen Duxiu was so politically active, he was arrested on June 11th of 1919 after being caught distributing leaflets across Beijing. He spent 83 days in prison, once he got out he resigned from his position as a professor at Peking University and moved to Shanghai which was becoming a Marxist hub. Numerous Chinese intellectuals became radicalized and this gradually broke the unity of the movement apart. Hu Shih for example had studied in the United States and was deeply influenced by John Dewey and thus came to represent the reformist intellectual side. Hu Shih would go on to write countless articles arguing against the adoption of “isms” and doctrines and instead to suggest it be better to study the practical social problems. Doctrines that advocated fundamental solutions to social problems, were not entirely irrelevant, but probably hindrances to their solutions according to Hu Shih. Li Dazhao once wrote a letter to Hu Shih arguing that specific social problems could not be solved without the participation of the masses, thus there was a need to instill a consciousness of society's problems as a whole, so they could relate this to their own individual problems. Li Dazhao asserted “intellectuals need to go out and work in the practical movement, which to him meant the propagation of socialist theory and its advocacy as a tool to eliminate the non-laboring bureaucratic robbers." Li Dazhao furthered this by arguing to his followers like Mao Zedong the necessity for those studying revolutionary ideals to really study the conditions of the world, so they could adapt the theory to said conditions. 

So there was kind of a battle between Hu Shih and Li Dazhao. Hu Shih advocated for solving China’s problems gradually through social reforms, while Li Dazhao wanted revolution. Now again Hu Shih was deeply influenced at the time by John Dewey, and as American Sinologist Maurice Meisner said about the debates between Hu Shih and Li Dazhao 

“"Hu Shih had formulated his ideas in terms of the American philosophical and sociological tradition . . . The philosophy and sociology of John Dewey did not need to be concerned with the structure of society as a whole because in the American social context it could be optimistically assumed that the whole world would take care of itself. Dewey's program was essentially conservative, assuming that reform would take place within the framework of existing institutions; but it was a product of a society that could afford conservatism, a society that could solve particular social problems because there already existed a viable social structure and a general consensus on the direction of social progress . . .As applied to China, Dewey's program was neither conservative nor radical but largely irrelevant. After the Revolution of 1911 China was confronted with a crisis of social, cultural and political disintegration of massive proportions. The extreme poverty and widespread illite:racy of the masses of the Chinese people and the lack of even the rudiments of responsible political authority negated the possibility of the general social consensus that Dewey's program presupposed. Because of the overwhelming social crisis within and the threat of foreign aggression from without, the very existence of the Chinese nation was in doubt at the time . . . To advocate the study of particular social problems and to call for social reform (piecemeal) was to assume that there existed or would soon arise a viable social and political structure within which problems could be and reforms implemented. This assumption was unwarranted either by the existing situation or by any realistic hopes for the immediate future. In view of the total crisis of Chinese society, Dewey's program was doomed to failure." 

The debate between the two revealed a crucial issue, the necessity of changing words into action. You can criticize Marxism on multiple grounds and rightfully so, but I don’t think anyone would disagree its not effective action wise. By its very nature Marxism enforces real action to take place. By the mid 1920’s Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu easily looked like they would assume leadership positions in the CCP, and of course in the background was Li Dazhao’s assistant Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong was greatly influenced by the May Fourth Movement and he saw it as a great dividing line between the earlier stage of a bourgeois-democratic revolution in China and for him a later stage, the awakening of the working class in alliance with progressive bourgeoisie. As said by Mao Zedong in his essay on New Democracy:  

" China's cultural or ideological front, the period preceding the May fourth Movement and the period following it form two distinct historical periods. Before the Movement, the struggle on China's cultural front was a struggle between the new culture of the bourgeoisie and the old culture of the feudal class ... the ideology of the new learning played the revolutionary role of fighting the Chinese feudal ideology and was in the service of the bourgeois democratic revolution of the old period ... But since the May fourth Movement, things have gone differently. Since then a brand new cultural force of fresh strength has appeared in China, namely, the ideas of Communist culture guided by the Chinese Communists: · the Communist world outlook and the Communist theory of social revolution. The May fourth Movement occurred in 1919, and in 1921 the Chinese Communist Party was founded and China's labor movement actually began . . . Before the May fourth Movement, the new culture of China was a culture of the old-democratic character and a part of the capitalist cultural revolution of the world bourgeoisie. Since the May fourth Movement, it has become a culture of new-democratic character and a part of the socialist cultural revolution of the world proletariat . . . What is called new democratic culture is the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture of the broad masses of the people . ·· . New democratic culture is, in a word, the and anti-feudal culture of the broad masses of the people under the leadership of the world proletariat”.

Overall the May Fourth Movement had a profound effect on the development of modern China. It convinced many Chinese intellectuals, correctly or incorrectly, the only adequate response to imperialism was revolutionary action seen in form of Communism. Yet something stood in the way of turning China into a communist nation. Warlords. Then after the Warlords were defeated, Chiang Kai-Shek emerged as the leader of the fractured nation, forced to lead the fight for China’s survival against the Empire of Japan. Yet the CCP put its head down, they worked, worked very hard and waited for the right moment. When it came, they struck, and they won. 

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The May fourth movement was a watershed moment for modern Chinese history. In many ways it was the great moment where two dividing forces emerged that would be embodied later in Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalists and Mao Zedong's CCP. The fight for the future of China had begun, though it remains in the background as the age of the Warlords has come.